'Unethical' game closure is an article on the Korea Times where a fantasy author complains about the closure of City of Heroes, NCsoft's MMORPG (thanks Ant and Krnl_Mandrake via Slashdot). The article focuses on the backlash the move has inspired, though there is a quote from an NCsoft spokesperson offering a shred of hope for fans of the superhero game:

NCsoft’s Seoul-based spokesman Kim Yo-han said that terminating the service was a “strategic decision,” adding that “nothing had been decided on selling the game or other action afterwards.”

According to local industry analysts, the game has been bringing in 3 billion won ($2.76 million) every quarter. “It is hard to comprehend what NCsoft means when they said they closed it for strategic reasons,” one analyst said.

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Jivaro wrote on Dec 6, 2012, 11:32:Wait, what does Perfect World have to do with it? Does Cryptic still have some kind of say in the CoX franchise?

Was about to say, CoX was run by Paragon Studios, which was the majority of the Cryptic crew that created it, and Cryptic sold it/left it and went with Atari until it was sold to Perfect Worlds.

That being said, I wouldn't mind Perfect World buying it and updating the engine to Champions Online/Star Trek Online's.

Not sure if it was posited here or on Ars. But the rumour was that something with the way the sales/split originally happened, PWE actually owns some aspect of the rights to the CoX IP. There was a licensing agreement in place but it just expired, and since PWE has their own competing product -- weren't going easy on NCSoft for re-licensing it. So NCSoft cut their losses and closed up shop on CoX.

The other component was that there may be some eastern corporate world politics going on that we just don't have a view on, and CoX was a casualty of that.

That rumor was debunked by Cryptic about a month ago, said they had nothing to do with the closure, nor did Perfect World.As for the 80 employees, well there was a posting somewhere that NC Soft had them working on a secret new MMORPG but canceled it, and several/maybe half of their employees were on the new game.I would post a link to the forum post but NC Soft shut the site down faster than you could blink.